A Place Of Death
by Ceillean
Summary: Far Future tale of a young Jedi captured on a forgotten world. Will he be rescued? Or will he die painfully and alone?


The desert is a place of death.

The sun burns the skin while the wind picks up grains of sand that inflict more pain. Thirst is the worst of all ailments. Finding water on the planet _Idria_ is nearly impossible. As is finding hope to ever depart the world that had once flourished with yellow grass and tall trees, that had once been a metropolis of busy streets and alleys, crowded spaceports and markets. _Idria_ had been splendor and magnificence, enchantment and beauty – until _they_ set foot upon the land.

Until the Empire had sent out their legions of white armored murderers to clean _Idria's_ surface of aliens and humans alike. Only few survived the first wave of the attack and only few ever dared to fight back. No one had come to help.

Whatever for?

_Idria_ is an unknown planet in the far reaches of space. There is nothing important, nothing special – besides three young lives perhaps.

_Idria_.

A desert.

A place of death.

***

A ball of white hot flame engulfed the young Idrians as they ran for their lives. Just not fast enough. Within seconds their pale golden skin blistered along their long bones, melting into a thick mold of indistinguishable biological mass. The scent of singed hair and cooked flesh permeated the air. Cries were drowned out by the deafening roar of the explosion behind them.

What had once been an underground weapons cache was now nothing more than yet another hole in the ground.

Bodies flayed as they were hurled through the air by the shockwave. With sickening crunches and painful thuds, they landed on the desert floor in a heap of limbs. Out of the group of six, two survived.

It took several long moments for Natal to get her bearings. The bright purple sky above her hurt her violet eyes but she didn't have the strength to turn away. Moving hurt.

"We have to hurry." Tusir's distorted voice sounded odd along with the ringing in her ears. Of course, Natal knew that he was right. The strike team had effectively eradicated the weapons cache but they still had a job to do. But getting to her feet would force her to face the carnage. Already she could smell the blood, the gore mixing with the warm sand.

Her stomach heaved while she let the faces of her friends pass through her mind. They were all dead, their lifeless bodies broken and scattered all around her. Natal turned onto her side and emptied her stomach, crying milky tears for those who had died for a cause that had already been lost from the beginning.

"If we find the _Essence_ user, he will help us."

"You believe so fiercely, Tusir." Natal hissed between clenched teeth while she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "Blind faith will ultimately get you killed."

"I hope –"

"There is no such thing as hope!" She snapped, her voice dripping with purest venom while she stared at him and shook her head, black feathery hair falling to her shoulders. At least, what was left of it.

"They will have died in vain if we give up now. The white armored men will not hunt us while they try and save their precious weapons."

Natal nodded slowly, feeling lightheaded as the scene before her finally settled in.

Death. All around them.

"Let's go." Without so much as a backward glance, Natal got to her feet and began walking a straight line, ignoring the pain in her arms and legs, the stinging of her charred flesh, the smell of scorched clothing. She dared not look back for fear of wanting to be with her friends, of wanting to embrace death rather than fight for her homeworld the way the revolutionists had taught her.

But it was hard. With every step she took, she felt like a traitor to her people.

They had died.

She had lived.

The desert was a place of death.

***

The prison cell, if one could actually call it such, smelled dank and musky. It might have been used as an old shed back when the Idrians had grown as a community. In the dim light, the Jedi recognized wooden shelves along the walls, some still stacked with cans of food and bottled water. Although, going by the thick carpet of grey dust covering each surface, he supposed no one had really ventured into the shed for several years.

Not until he had stumbled onto the surface purely by accident. On his way home from a mission gone awry, his ship had developed a slight glitch, forcing him to land on the desert world. He had estimated a day or two for repairs and hadn't expected white armored Stormtroopers to appear out of seemingly nowhere, leveling odd-looking blasters in his direction. More than a dozen had surrounded his ship and realizing he had nowhere to go, he had not resisted when they had taken him away in utter silence.

He'd counted seventy-eight days so far.

Seventy-eight days in which he had been certain his friends would find and rescue him, sixty-one days in which he had hoped that the search was still ongoing; forty-three days in which he had been tortured and asked questions he could not begin to answer. Twenty-eight days in which his hope had slowly dwindled. Ten days in which he knew his time was up.

The entrance to his prison opened with a loud creak, spilling purple light into the enclosed space from above. Sand pooled down through cracks from the wooden trapdoor as it was pulled upward and with an all too familiar thundering thump, it was laid aside before booted feet came down a flight of old stairs.

The Jedi drew on the Force to calm himself. In the beginning he had fought off the Stormtroopers, had undid the binds holding his wrists and ankles tied in place to an old wooden chair and on occasion he had made it to the surface. Only to be caught and dragged back. The punishment had been worse than he could have ever imagined.

Being a Jedi, being able to use the Force – it got him absolutely no where.

Pain was his constant companion now. Pain and more than dozen faceless soldiers he had thought all but extinct.

One man came to him every day. It seemed he was the commanding officer and as such it seemed he had privileges the others did not. He did not wear the armor, nor the mask.

He wore a hideous face of an old human male.

"Ready to talk?" He grumbled, his voice deep and scratchy.

The Jedi merely smiled. On the forty-first day of his incarceration, he had realized that talking, answering questions was equal to staying silent. The outcome was always the same.

At one point, the Jedi had hoped for a quick death. He hadn't expected medications, certain drugs to help him regain consciousness; drugs to make him hallucinate and babble incoherently while he saw scenes from his nightmares play out in front of him.

They had broken him.

"I will let you go, if you talk."

The Jedi shifted his gaze towards the tall man who stood flanked by three armored guards, two beside him and one at his back. He'd never suggested letting him go.

Never.

Which meant it was a trick.

The Force had always been his ally. The Force had forsaken him. He was completely alone, trapped beneath the hot desert floor, waiting for peace to find him.

The Jedi smiled. And yet he spoke nothing.

"Don't you want to leave? Take back your ship and return to your own life? I'm giving you that chance."

There was no doubt in the Jedi's mind that the man was lying. There was no need for being truthful. All he wanted were answers he could not possibly give. Questions about the Empire, the fall of the Empire, the Remnant – he was far too young. At twenty-seven, the Imperial Era was ancient History to him.

Minutes ticked by while the Jedi closed his eyes and prayed to the Force that his soul would rise to become one with the essence of life once his body lost all its functions.

"One more chance. Tell me what I want to know and you're free."

The Jedi threw his head back and laughed. The tall human male balled his hand into a tight fist and shattered the Jedi's nose.

Still he laughed.

He finally understood.

The desert was a place of death.

***

"Do you see it?"

Natal crouched behind a great boulder, holding magnifying lenses in her hands. "Four guards."

"Four?" Tusir whispered incredulously. "We can't take on four guards at once."

"We've dealt with worse odds. We can do this, Tusir." She paused while the wind whipped around them, singing the song of a crying planet. Her tears fell during the night as she wept for her slaughtered children, her screams echoed through the air when it rained and thundered. _Idria_ wept. "Either way, we have nothing more to lose."

Natal set the magnifying lenses aside and laid a hand on Tusir's arm. "We have lost everything in this war. You've lost your family as have I. We have one chance to save the _Essence_ user while we make sure the armored men never again breathe a single breath of our sweet air."

Tusir closed his beautiful turquoise eyes and nodded once. "If we die –"

"We won't, Tusir. Have faith that the Goddess protects us and our cause."

He took a deep breath and forced a smile onto his pale, golden face. Perhaps, if things had gone differently, Tusir might have become a scholar. He loved to read and to learn, he loved history and asking questions. He wasn't a fighter, unlike Natal and it saddened her that he had been dragged into this like the rest of their people – dragged into a war started by a species they had never even heard of before. "I would have loved to study these humans." Tusir muttered.

"Perhaps you still can." Natal took a deep breath and squeezed his arm briefly. "Let us hurry."

They closed their eyes and spoke a quick prayer to their Goddess before unhooking their own weapons from their belts and stepping around the boulder.

In plain sight of the white armored murderers, they began firing yellow shots at those that would see them harmed.

After all, the desert was a place of death.

***

The taste of blood is nauseating. The sound of breaking bones equally so. The knowledge that rescue is no longer an option is flooring.

The Jedi coughed and squeezed his eyes closed. He had no choice but to listen to his assailants muttered curses while he beat him.

"How stupid are you, boy?" The man snarled, throwing yet another punch to the Jedi's gut. "I gave you a chance!" Another punch. And another. And another.

Yet in between the sound of fist against skin, there was the distinct hum of blaster fire from above. The Jedi smiled a toothy, bloody smile and again he laughed. Perhaps not all was lost. Perhaps his rescue had finally come.

Rescue after seventy-eight days.

Could he dare hope?

"Take a look what's going on up there." The male said in a dark, sinister voice while he glanced over his shoulder and spoke to his guards. He grew quiet, pensive almost, while they ascended the stairs. Quietness reigned for a long moment and then more blaster fire. The human male growled obscenities under his breath and grabbing his blaster, he turned around and walked up the steps that would lead to freedom.

The Jedi slumped in the chair and closed his eyes. Hope truly prolonged the suffering of man. He had thought he'd given up but hearing blaster fire up above… it opened a valve within him and the urge to die drifted away.

He wanted to live.

He heard a menacing scream, like a warrior's call followed by an ugly gurgling sound that told him everything he needed to know. Silence reigned for a very long time. Unending and daunting.

The soft fall of footsteps made the Jedi raise his battered face to the purple light. Where once had stood a Stormtrooper with a rifle pointed at his chest, now stood a beautiful native of the planet _Idria_. Her golden face was expressionless, her slanted violet eyes hard with mistrust and hurt. She was tall even for her species, long and gangly yet strong.

"Tusir!" She whispered in her native tongue. "He's alive."

He could not put into words how grateful, how indebted he felt to these people.

The woman hurried to his side and undid his binds in hectic, yet graceful motions. The man behind her beckoned for them to hurry and so she did. She wound an arm around his waist and carried him out of the shed, out of his prison, up the wooden stairs and towards freedom, into an unknown future.

Perhaps the desert was not only a place of death.

Perhaps the desert was indeed a place of hope.


End file.
